These pictures, drawn by a harmonograph, may better be described as pictures of music. A harmonograph is a mechanical device that uses pendulums that move pen and paper simultaneously to create these images. The device was invented by a mathematician in 1844 and apparently was a popular form of entertainment at Victorian soirees.
The images vary depending on how the pendulums swing in relation to one another. Harmonic ratios used in music such as 3:2, 4:3 give the images below.

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

These beautiful origami pieces were constructed by mathematicians Erik and Martin Demaine (first image) and Thomas Hull (second image) to investigate the surfaces that result from different kinds of pleated folding.

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

"Map the infinite checkerboard to the plane so that black squares map to squares and white squares map to quadrilaterals. Such a map is a disguised version of a discrete analytic function. This is a discrete approximation to the exponential map f(z)=e^z."
source: http://www.math.brown.edu/~rkenyon/gallery/gallery.html

Pictures of Math

Math can be incredibly beautiful. Often this beauty is only accessible to those who study math at an advanced level; images such as these have a universal aesthetic.

I started this blog hoping to share some of the more colorful parts of mathematics with those who may have dismissed math as the result of a bad algebra or calculus class. Meanwhile, for the mathematically minded, I hope these images inspire you to learn new things.

With every image posted, there are links so that you can read more about the mathematics behind the image. I encourage you to do so as sometimes, the math involved is just as beautiful, if not more so.